He is lonely.
Oh, how unfortunate he is! Why dies he not? Ah, who would weep for
him? How cold is a grave which no warm tears of love moisten!
"He is lonesome in the winter night; for him the earth has no
flowers, and dark burn the lights of heaven. Why wanders he, the
lonesome one; why waits he; why flies he not, the shadow, to the
land of shades? Ah, he still hopes, he is a mendicant who begs for
joy, who yet waits in the eleventh hour, that a merciful hand may
give him an alms.
"One only little blossom of earth will he gather, bear it upon his
heart, in order henceforth not so lonesomely, not so entirely
lonesome, to wander down to rest."
It was my own condition which I described. I deplored myself.
Early deprived of my parents, without brothers and sisters,
friends, and relations, I stood in the world yet so solitary and
forlorn, that but for an inward confidence in heaven, and a
naturally happy temper, I should often enough have wished to leave
this contemptuous world; till now, however, I had almost
constantly hoped from the future, and this more from an
instinctive feeling that this might be the best, than to subdue by
philosophy every too vivid wish for an agreeable present time,
because it was altogether so opposed to possibility. For some
time, however, alas! it had been otherwise with me; I felt, and
especially this evening, more than ever an inexpressible desire to
have somebody to love,--to have some one about me who would cleave
to me--who would be a friend to me;--in short, to have (for me the
highest felicity on earth) a wife--a beloved, devoted wife! Oh,
she would comfort me, she would cheer me! her affection, even in
the poorest hut, would make of me a king.
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